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"Stapleton Airport as seen from the air in 1966. This is where Emily Howell Warner took flying lessons and was her base of employment for decades.

Emily Howell was born on October 30, 1939, and attended Holy Family High School in Colorado.[10] Warner was interested in airplanes as a child.[11] After graduating high school she looked into becoming a "flight attendant.[8]

At seventeen, she decided on a career in piloting after her first trip on an airplane.[4][12] She was allowed to sit in the cockpit of a plane flying her home after a trip away from Denver. Warner said, “The pilot could see how excited I was and he encouraged me to take flying lessons. I replied: ‘Can girls do that?’”[10][13] She started flying in 1958, after getting the approval of her parents for lessons.[4][10] The lessons cost thirteen dollars per week at a time that she had a thirty-eight dollar per week paycheck.[4] She sometimes worked fourteen hours a day, with a morning flight, a full-time office job, and an evening flight. She obtained her private pilot license and a job as a flying traffic reporter within a year.[4]

She took a job as a receptionist for Clinton Aviation Company in "Denver, Colorado to pay for her instruction.[8] She worked there as a "flight instructor after obtaining additional certificates as a commercial pilot and flight instructor, and instrument and multiengine ratings.[10] She worked extra maintenance flights, such as delivering airplane parts or planes, in order to build her hours. She also flew with a reporter to provide traffic reports.[8]

In 1968, she began applying for a position at "Frontier Airlines as well as "Continental Airlines and "United Airlines.[6] Lou Clinton wrote letters recommending her.[14] She would renew her applications multiple times over a five-year period.[4] In late 1972, a fellow flight instructor said he was hired by Frontier Airlines, strengthening Warner's resolve.[11] At this point, Warner had been active in the aviation industry for more than twelve years. She had accrued more than 3,500 flight hours as a pilot[10] and 7,000 hours as a flight instructor.[6] Students she had trained were being hired with 1,500 to 2,000 hours of flying time.[4][6] A friend who worked with Frontier introduced her to the vice president of flight operations there[8] and Warner persisted in canvassing Frontier for a position.[11]

Warner flew Boeing 737-200s for Frontier Airlines such as the one pictured here

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The flight deck of a Boeing 737-200 as it was configured when Warner made her first flights with Frontier.

On January 29, 1973, "Frontier Airlines hired her.[4][11] It was fifteen years after her first plane flight.[10] This marked an opening for American women in one of the last sex-segregated occupations in the civilian aviation industry.[3] When Warner was hired there were no other women working as pilots for the major commercial airlines. By 1978, there were about 300 female commercial pilots in the United States.[6]